Wyeth faces loss in future lawsuits

WYETH said second-quarter profit fell 4.3%, a smaller decline than analysts expected.

Thu, 22 Jul, 2004 - 01:00

The company, which is investing €2 billion in a Wyeth BioPharma Campus at Grange Castle, said demand for medicines such as Effexor for depression boosted sales by 13%.

Net income fell to $827.3 million (€674.16m), or 62 cents a share, from $864.4 million, or 65 cents in the year-earlier quarter, when a gain from asset sales lifted profit, the Madison, New Jersey-based company said in a statement. Revenue rose to $4.22 billion.

Effexor sales increased 31%, bolstering earnings as Chief Executive Robert Essner faces declining demand for the Premarin hormone treatment and manages lawsuits over the company’s fen-phen diet drug.

A Texas jury in May ordered Wyeth to pay more than $1 billion to the family of a woman who died from a lung disease linked to fen-phen. The company has set aside $16.6 billion to cover costs related to lawsuits over the drug.

Over 6 million prescriptions were written for the fen-phen diet combination before Wyeth pulled drugs used in the mix off the market in 1997.

Shares of Wyeth rose 46 cents, or 1.4%, to $34.26 Tuesday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have fallen 29% in the past 12 months.

Combined sales of the company’s five fastest-growing drugs, including the Protonix ulcer medicine, increased 35%, Wyeth said. Effexor sales rose to $832 million in the quarter and probably will meet the target of more than $3 billion for the full year, the company said.

Revenue from Protonix, which Wyeth markets with Altana AG, climbed 25% to $389 million in the quarter.

Total revenue in the year-earlier quarter was $3.75 billion.

Wyeth had a gain during that period of about $290 million from the sale of some of its drugs and consumer products, including the anxiety treatment Ativan.

Wyeth said in June it plans to seek US approval for about 10 new drugs through 2006, including an antibiotic and an osteoporosis medicine that the company estimates may reach $1 billion in annual sales each.